Trapping is all done in winter and it is a lonely and adventurous calling.  Early in September, the men who go the greatest distance inland set out for their trapping grounds.  Usually two men go together.  They build a small log hut called a “tilt,” about eight by ten feet in size.  Against each of two sides a bunk is made of saplings and covered with spruce or balsam boughs.  On the boughs the sleeping bags are spread, and the result is a comfortable bed.  The bunks also serve as seats.  A little sheet iron stove that weighs, including stovepipe, about eighteen pounds and is easy to transport, heats the tilt, and answers very well for the trapper’s simple cooking.  The stovepipe, protruding through the roof, serves as a chimney.

The main tilt is used as a base of supplies, and here reserve provisions are stored together with accumulations of furs as they are caught.  Fat salt pork, flour, baking powder or soda, salt, tea and Barbadoes molasses complete the list of provisions carried into the wilderness from the trading post.  Other provisions must be hunted.

Each man provides himself with a frying pan, a tin cup, a spoon or two, a tin pail to serve as a tea kettle and sometimes a slightly larger pail for cooking.  On his belt he carries a sheath knife, which he uses for cooking, skinning, eating and general utility.  He rarely encumbers himself with a fork.

For use on the trail each man has a stove similar to the one that heats the tilt, a small cotton tent, and a toboggan.

From the base tilt the trapping paths or trails lead out.  Each trapper has a path which he has established and which he works alone.  He hauls his sleeping bag, provisions and other equipment on his toboggan or, as he calls it, “flat sled.”  He carries his rifle in his hand and his ax is stowed on the toboggan, for he never knows when a quick shot will get him a pelt or a day’s food.

Sometimes tilts are built along the path at the end of a day’s journey, but if there is no tilt the cotton tent is pitched.  In likely places traps are set for marten, mink or fox.  Ice prevents trapping for the otter in winter, but they are often shot.

At the end of a week or fortnight the partners meet at the base tilt.  Otherwise each man is alone, and we may imagine how glad they are to see each other when the meeting time comes.  But they cannot be idle.  Out through the snow-covered forest, along the shores of frozen lakes and on wide bleak marshes the trapper has one hundred traps at least, and some of them as many as three hundred.  The men must keep busy to look after them properly, and so, after a Sunday’s rest together they again separate and are away on their snowshoes hauling their toboggans after them.

At Christmas time they go back to their homes, down by the sea, to see their wives and children and to make merry for a week.  What a meeting that always is!  How eagerly the little ones have been looking forward to the day when Daddy would come!  O, that blessed Christmas week!  But it is only seven days long, and on the second day of January the trappers are away again to their tilts and trails and traps.  Again early in March they visit their homes for another week, and then again return to the deep wilderness to remain there until June.